


The Rip

by Chromat1cs



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alcohol, Banter, Canon Compliant, Cigarettes, Cunnilingus, Escapism, Exhibitionism, Explicit Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, First War with Voldemort, Group Sex, House Party, Intercrural Sex, Kissing, Light Angst, M/M, Mention of Peter, Misplaced Optimism, Multi, Pre-War, Recreational Drug Use, Sexual Content, Voyeurism, Wishful Thinking, and they’re absolutely right, because all three of these adorable losers think Lily is a goddess, other canon characters in passing - Freeform, what’s the opposite of woman-bashing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-06 14:35:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17941568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chromat1cs/pseuds/Chromat1cs
Summary: Sirius Black has just turned 20 as the world continues to turn itself on its head, but perhaps the most beautiful chaos of all is waiting just inside an emptied sitting room on the edge of a moment in which a shared glance says, “Well, why not?”— for HP Kinkfest 2019





	The Rip

**Author's Note:**

> I’m very excited to be part of HPKF for the first time, I hope you enjoy! Two of my favorite pairings in one spot, what more could I ask for? Thank you, Anon, for such a lovely prompt <3
> 
>  
> 
> __**Prompt OS8./S29.**  
>  Two couples not mixing with each other but having sex together, Remus/Sirius and James/Lily.

_“It's getting faster, moving faster now, it's getting out of hand,_  
_On the tenth floor, down the back stairs, it's a no man's land,_  
_Lights are flashing, cars are crashing, getting frequent now,_  
_I've got the spirit, lose the feeling, let it out somehow._

_“What means to you, what means to me, and we will meet again,_  
_I'm watching you, I'm watching her, I'll take no pity from you friends,_  
_Who is right, who can tell, and who gives a damn right now,_ _  
_ _Until the spirit new sensation takes hold, then you know…”_

Sirius takes a slow sip from the bottle hanging between his fingers, a bitter Muggle beer that someone had brought and crammed into the refrigerator along with scads of other brews, and can’t help but stare. They’re gorgeous, the both of them, slotted together in the Potters’ sitting room where nobody is sitting because everyone is dancing—most everyone, except for Sirius; almost forty-eight hours into his twentieth year, leaning against the wall with his pale ale in his pale hand, devouring the sight of Remus dancing with Lily as though society isn’t crumbling to pieces outside of this party.

Remus’ hands are on Lily’s waist from behind, platonic and sweet and yet their hips are swaying with a sharp harmony. Remus says something into her ear with a sideways grin, something that makes him laugh halfway through, and Lily picks up the humor and runs with it; head back in heftier laughter to bump against Remus’ shoulder, one hand up to ruffle into his hair with genial approval. She leaves it there, lazy hand, sweet and judgeless, and continues rocking with half-thought abandon to the record drowning everything to a dull roar. Remus smiles to himself and follows her lead. Sirius adores them.

 _You both should come by, everyone will be there and I already know we aren’t going to do much for your birthday._ James’ plea early last week was colored by a gesture up at the burgeoning moon as Sirius took a smoke outside one of the few wizarding pubs not shut indefinitely. Neither of them spoke the truth that “everyone” wouldn’t include the Prewett twins or Peter, all gone in varying limits of permanence but honestly sometimes it feels to Sirius like Pete is dead as well, with the way he avoids them these days. Sirius doesn’t care enough about their absent fourth partner in minor crime to continue checking in on him after Pete’s first few dodges to catch up, stay close, be present in this ever-failing archway of quiet disaster lately— _Sorry, lads, can’t tonight. Things just pile up, you know?_ And so Sirius has quit thinking about Peter, easily and with only a slight tug to his heart.

 _Yeah, sure._ Sirius had stubbed out the ash end of his cigarette on the wall, not spelling it away as habit would have him and letting instead the dormant magic claw under his skin for release and something that tingled of regret. _We’ll be there._

And now they’re here, and Sirius is having a better time than he had let himself anticipate.

It’s getting difficult nowadays to find bright spots in the corners and edges of tragedy. They’re losing friends and colleagues left and right, either to killing curses or defection that smears their existence worse than death. Sirius tries never to look at it head-on because that would make it real, and avoidance has always been the way he operates best. Remus is the one who prefers to fight things, all noble beast, grab them in his jaws and hold them up to the unholy morning light and say _How Dare You—_ he’s always been a truer hero, the truest of them all, only second to James. Perhaps that’s why he fits so prettily along the length of Lily’s back to the tune of Ian Curtis serenading this party like a wraith from the record player.

“Oi.”

Sirius turns to meet the clap on his shoulder and smiles over at James. “Oi yourself.”

“Smoke?”

“Haven’t got any, left them at home.” _And shouldn’t summon them._ Sirius kills the dregs of his beer with a steep sip and sets the bottle on the half-wall beside him, next to a half-emptied wine glass and a plastic handle of shitty rum.

James draws a battered cigarette carton of out his back pocket and wiggles it, mostly full, with a righteous little grin. “Shame.”

Sirius twins his smile and snips the box out of James’ hands with light fingers, turning on his heel to wind through the kitchen filled with familiar people, talking and laughing and dancing in tight clusters, out to the garden. Cool air kisses him, full-frontal and shocking for a moment against the warm din of the house behind him, and Sirius pauses as James collides with his back.

“Fuck, Padfoot, keep walking. Smoke in the threshold and Lily will kill you.”

Sirius glances over his shoulder and catches a throw of light that winks from the corner of James’ spectacles before he lopes down off the low step and out among the tidy little flower beds and high hedges. He taps out a cigarette and lights it with the bulky Zippo from his breast pocket—uncharmed, absolutely mundane, vaguely infuriating. His first draw on it is deep and pulls a bit too quickly at the paper, and he has to consciously calm his lungs after he pistons the exhale into the dark.

“Light?” James balances his own cigarette on his lip and beckons sharply for Sirius’ lighter. He tosses it back after calling up its hissy metallic flick, and Sirius catches it easily with one hand before re-pocketing it. “Cheers. Remus having a good time?”

“One of his favorite records is on and Lily is a good dance partner. I think he’s having a fantastic time. You?”

“Capital. Okay time the other night?” James just barely blinks at the emptying gibbous in the sky, and Sirius snorts benignly. He wants to ask _When the fuck did you get so protective?_ But then again, he feels it as well—holds faster to Remus whenever they embrace, one-arms James a bit more tightly around the shoulders when he grips him in greeting or farewell, spends an extra moment with a hand in Lily’s hair when he ruffles it to rile her up on purpose. They’re losing ground, they can all see it if they squint, and the only way to stave off the horror is to cling in tiny ways.

“Sure. New Forest is a good spot for a run, we like it well enough.”

James nods with the same quotidian ease, as though Sirius had just told him he’d won a couple quid betting on Kenmare, and he appreciates it quietly. “We found a doxie in that row of tulips there the other day, did Lily tell you?”

Sirius lets James launch into the brief story of Lily being harassed by the little creature, fending it off with a trowel, and laughs along while also trying to ignore the tightness in his chest. Leave it to James Potter to reach for normalcy in this racket of disaster building around them—throw a house party, tell a story, marry a woman who gardens, stand there with a hand in his pocket and that comfortable little smile on his face. Part of Sirius wants to seize him by the shoulders and shake him awake, _Do you understand that we’re losing? We’re on the right side but it’s the weaker side and we’re fucking losing,_ but James is beaming at the memory of Lily swinging a gardening tool like a sword and the compulsion to kill even an ounce of that relentless optimism dies in Sirius’ guts.

James has ever been the best of them all at pretending the darker ends of things are manageable.

The track has changed on the record player, and Sirius looks over to the sound of it through the door as though tracking a scent when Fenwick steps outside with his thumb already packing fresh tobacco into his pipe; _Where will it end?/Where will it end?_

“What time is it?” Sirius scuffs his cigarette out on the flagstone underfoot, patently forgetting about the watch around his wrist. James checks his own.

“Quarter past ten. You tired already?”

The joking challenge in James’ voice is refreshing, but Sirius realizes now that they’ve been speaking mostly questions between them. When did this happen, this shift into battleground cataloging instead of the ease of simple catch-up? He hates it. Sirius doesn’t realize he’s frowning until he marks the little furrow between James’ eyebrows, and he shakes his head with a tight little sigh.

“Nah. Just wondering when we need to get home before Floos shut down.”

“Don’t be daft, stay in the spare room.”

“The both of us?”

James gives Sirius the most doubtful look Sirius has seen in an age, and he can’t help the true jag of a chuckle that burbles up from his depths. “What, like you’ve separate beds at home? Fuck off,” James chides as he pinches his own cigarette out between his fingers with a spot of magic. The veins in Sirius’ forearms protest at the tiny yellow glow, but it’s gone as soon as it arrived and, Sirius tells himself as he grinds his back teeth, it isn’t as though something so small could attract the sort of attention he so desperately wants to avoid.

Perhaps it’s because the predisposition for dark magic is written there, somewhere in his blood, but Sirius denies the pull of it like some awful internal tide. He nods and bundles his fists into his pockets as he suddenly feels the cold out here. “Yeah, thanks then. We’ll stay.”

“Cheers. Back in?” James claps Sirius’ shoulder again, a double-pat as though greeting Padfoot loping up to him on all fours, and Sirius takes peace in the way the familiar gesture calms him thoroughly. He heads back into the house with James and ignores the way his traitorous imagination flits through all the ways in which Fenwick might meet a grisly end when the man shoots them a toothy smile around the stem of his pipe.

The house envelops them in warmth again and Sirius finds Remus like a signal flare, the gold of his curls beacon-bright from the edge of the kitchen peeking out above the press of guests. James peels off to be pulled into someone else’s conversation, host etiquette coming like oxygen from his father’s side of things, and as Sirius sidles nearer past the refrigerator he realizes Lily is there as well.

“Ta.” Sirius slides his hand around Remus’ waist, warm and solid and leaning sweetly into him with automatic comfort, blinking when the tang of skunk hits his nose.

“Finally glad I dragged you out then?” Remus speaks into the dip behind Sirius’ ear, defiantly intimate and cheeky all at once. If Sirius had the time or the desire to self-reflect at all lately, he would conclude that he and Remus have largely traded demeanors as the war has progressed—Sirius folding himself more inward, closer to the chest, pretending his family name doesn’t chase him like some sort of cancerous tail on everything he does; Remus blooming outward, less careful in nearly everything he does, as though he believes he isn’t going to last very long and so why waste time with caution now? _Shit,_ the thought rips into Sirius’ gut with an unwitting slice. He shuts it down and draws a tiny circle against Remus’ hip with his thumb while Remus passes a tightly-rolled spliff to Lily, who hits it with a draw that puts them to shame.

“Your husband told me you’d kill me if I smoked in the house.” Sirius stares her down with good humor while Lily smiles to herself and lets the smoke curl calmly from between those perfectly-painted red lips of hers.

“My husband is right, cigarette smoke is a bitch to charm out of anything.” Lily grins full-on and passes the spliff back to Remus as she shrugs a pretty fall of hair over her shoulder. Sirius wishes she’d been more privy to this side of herself at school; this side that doesn’t give a whit for anything besides what makes her happy. She could have had a far better time of it for much longer.

“This isn’t a cigarette,” Remus follows up helpfully, obviously, taking his own toke of the drug before depositing it carefully between Sirius’ lips. Remus’ eyes dance, alive and 19 and the color of boiling goldenrod, and Sirius lets himself pretend for a moment, as he draws deep from the sharp spice of the drug, that he’ll find a way to marry this man one of these days.

“So it isn’t.” He holds the spliff out to Lily without looking and pulls Remus into a kiss by his jumper collar, as lighthearted as he can manage, and shows his middle finger to Lily when she takes the roll at the same time she makes a joking sound of hennish intrigue at the two of them.

“Dance with me?” Remus’ breath is limned with weed and whiskey and the basal scent of his tongue when he pulls back to murmur into the gap between their lips, and Sirius wants to melt. He wants to disappear or dissolve or implode into those huge pupils drinking him in like summertime. _A chance to watch, admire the distance/Still occupied, though you forget—_ the record player threads into Sirius’ mind again, constantly, a running stitch of thoughts he wants to murder and grip hard all at once, and he defies his instinct to simply pull Remus down into the false safety of the Potters’ overstuffed armchair and nods.

“You lead.”

Remus slips his hand into Sirius’ and pulls him gently to the cleared out dining room; the long heirloom table and cushioned chairs all charmed out if the way against the walls to make room for the swaying crowd of friends, most of whom Sirius only recognizes in scraps of features or fashion sense. He doesn’t care much right now anyways for anything besides Remus’ hips, onto which his hands have been placed once they reach the center of the dining room. Surrounded in the anonymity of familiarity, Remus presses back against Sirius’ body the same way Lily had been dancing with Remus earlier. But Remus brings this over the threshold of friendship, smokes in its proverbial doorway before tugging the feeling out into sensuality’s territory. He laces his fingers into Sirius’ against his body, lithe and long and slow alongside the record’s rhythm, and Sirius follows Remus’ swaying current with the flow of the music and breathes him deeply as though he can never get enough.

“We’re to stay the night, James insists it.” Sirius can’t stay from nipping softly at Remus’ ear with the low murmur. He feels Remus’ shoulders tighten with a sweet thrill at that before Remus nods his assent. He doesn’t reply with words but he lets Sirius grip him a bit tighter, feel the heat leaching out beneath the hem of his jumper and the band of his jeans, and Sirius thanks him for that small grace with another mouthy press along the shell of Remus’ ear. Remus shudders again. Sirius lets himself weigh the merits of using a silencing charm or not when he and Remus inevitably unspool together later tonight.

They dance through the next few tracks, all liquidy movements that meld even more like potion-slick when Sirius feels the mild high overtake him soon enough. He finds himself with a hand under Remus’ jumper, splayed across Remus’ stomach, daring to thumb teasingly at the button of his jeans, kissing him long across the neck and burying his own nose in those curls as he presses hungrily against the heat of Remus’ body. Sirius can distantly hear the sound of guests Flooing away just before 11:00 to beat the clock of Central closure curfew, or leaving with bright farewells through the front door, and it isn’t much longer past then before the record ends in the soft loop of the needle’s hiss. Sirius returns to himself, wrapped around Remus like shadowy protection incarnate, and thrills softly with the feeling of Remus leaning heavily against him in the silence.

Sirius pulls himself back, reluctantly, with a distant tug like a scab pulling away from healed skin just a day too early. He realizes he feels hot from head to foot, half-hard, and Remus’ owlish blink and near-parted lips are pairing well with the light flush painting the high points of his cheeks. Sirius lets Remus notice the slow devouring glance that he lavishes along Remus’ body. “Alright?”

Remus chuckles to himself and hooks a finger into one of Sirius’ belt loops. “You fucking ponce.”

The back door shuts noisily to bring James crossing through the kitchen, snatching up a lumpy biscuit from the mostly-empty platter Dorcas had brought for potluck before flopping onto the sofa several paces away from Sirius and Remus. “Successful shindig,” he crows, mouth full, to nobody in particular.

“Tea?”

Sirius turns to face Lily popping into the kitchen through the laundry room. “Cheers, sure.”

“Yes, thanks.” Remus’ smile is soft and sleepy, the precious sort of smile that Sirius wishes he can bottle up when they wake up beside one another in the rare and pale dawn, and Sirius is hopeless to follow him to the sitting room. Remus sits himself on the armchair and so Sirius settles at his feet, comfortable and automatic, and flutters his eyes shut as Remus’ hand finds it’s careful way into his hair. Hot-and-bothered can stand to wait just a bit longer. He’ll take quietude wherever he can find it anymore.

Sirius absorbs the warm sounds of Lily picking through the kitchen to put the kettle on the Muggle way—the flow of the tap water, the tiny swooping _shing_ of the kettle lid opening and closing, the clatter of her oven burner, the clink of four mugs on the counter. The water boils with a very soft roar as Remus finds the spot at the atlas of Sirius’ skull that he loves best, and Sirius feels Padfoot rise up and almost lets a pitiful little whine out of his throat. _Bollocks,_ forget the almost, it slips out anyways.

James bursts with laughter from his place on the couch, the only one out of the three of them not suffuse with a mellow high but still most prone to hysterics nonetheless. “Alright, Fido?”

“Fuck _off,”_ Sirius groans, blatantly leaning into Remus’ hand as he rubs tiny little scritches against Sirius’ scalp. He would never admit it beyond the walls of their bedroom, the scintillating taboo between himself and Remus, that some of the things that make his tongue loll as a dog do just as much and more to the heat in his pelvis as a man. Working now, in subtle and accurate circles at the tips of Remus’ fingers, Sirius feels the reddish spangle of it through his belly in a slow, sweet crawl. Remus knows just what he’s doing and Sirius isn’t against it at all. The two of them have fucked in the spare room here before, at another one of James’ crammed parties; what’s another round a bit later?

The kettle whistles, not the wheezy shrill of the one back at their flat but a homey little tone—a tuned hum instead of a shriek. Lily cuts it off with a flick, and then the water is sploshing pleasantly into the mugs before she calls out, “Milk or sugar?”

“Nah.” Sirius twists his head slightly to give Remus access to one of the subtle cords at the back of his neck, at the same time Remus replies, “Just one sugar, thanks.”

“Dash of milk for me, lovely.” James resituates himself on the couch, lying sideways with his feet clearing some room on the other end for Lily to fill, and after some more small sounds of teaspoons and stirring Lily arrives in the sitting room carrying two mugs with another pair of them floating behind her.

Through his high, Sirius bites down on his impulse to dispel the charm with a sharp whip of his wand, but he’s left the thing at home like his cigarettes and he knows it would offend Lily more than it would assuage his compulsion to hide. Sirius forgets, often and with scraping pangs in his throat, that not everyone has the liberty of living with magic in the small struts of daily things for their entire life. As much as his own experience with it smacks of bitterness, Sirius can still see those glorious glimmers of wonder in Remus’ eyes when he’s toasted bread or folded laundry with nothing but a flick or his wrist. He can grant Lily this pardon.

The tea is the perfect temperature when Lily hands it down to him, and Sirius beams up at her as he takes it. “Are you happy with how your ‘shindig’ turned out?”

“Entirely!” She sounds exhausted but wholly satisfied, and she sinks into the sofa with a wide smile. “I’m just glad everyone could make it before the holiday ramps up and steals them away.”

There’s an invisible bolt that hits the room at that, the seizure of a moment that Sirius feels like a blade. It isn’t the holiday that threatens to swallow their friends anymore; it’s loss, or pain, or death. They all know that. Don’t they? Remus’ fingers still just slightly enough to scream trepidation before he buries the freeze with a resuming sweep of this thumb. Sirius hears him sip noisily at his tea and hum soft approval as the tension smears away then with each passing heartbeat. “Me too,” Remus hums. He pets intently at the spot where Sirius’ hairline meets his neck, as if to say _Heel, don’t bring it up._ “Your wedding feels like an age ago, it was really nice to see everybody.”

“Fletcher looks like shit though, didn’t you think?” James cackles when Lily swats at his arm, and just like that the strange moment passes completely. Sirius’ shoulders relax. Remus shifts his shin slightly, so Sirius can rest his head sideways against his knee.

In the warmth of the Potters’ sitting room, they reminisce carefully and sip their tea down to empty. Remus pulls out another joint soon enough and shares it down to ashes with Sirius and Lily while James pours himself a few fingers of port, and they end up forgetting to be preoccupied for just a bit longer.

It’s Lily who sighs first, a mellifluous little sound on the rubied edge of anticipation if Sirius listens closely enough, when she leans her head back into James’ shoulder. She’s dissolved into a long sprawl along his body; parallel like contrasting pours of caramel, swirled together in contented exhaustion and the promise of sleep soon, but Lily doesn’t seem like she wants sleep. She tips her chin up and murmurs into James’ chin a simple “I love you,” bald and shimmering and tinged with a giggle, and James curls her into a kiss by way of answering. Sirius shifts, a bit closer to Remus and perhaps tipping his face away by a hair, in some semblance of privacy.

Sirius realizes he’s never been privy to any part of the way James and Lily show affection for one another beyond the habitual little touches they trade at Order meetings or the tidy Hello and Farewell and Crossing By You In The Hall kisses they share. James never did their dormitory the disservice of taking it up for a romp throughout year seven, for all the Head Boy and Girl ease they had with one another in _those_ rooms. And so despite his propensity for looking away from other people’s adoration, Sirius finds himself curious to notice the way James touches Lily’s sides and arms and stomach very similarly to the way he touches Remus—carefully, reverently, with the sorts of shapes that befit the handling of artifacts woven thick with magic itself.

“Shall we?” Remus makes to stand with that soft murmur, a light hint down at Sirius with all his secretive meanings in two syllables— _Shall We; Come On; Please Me; Fuck Me._ Sirius stands as well, piles his hair up into an elastic band and rubs at one eye, is he tired? How can he be tired, they’re about to have a wonderful time—

“No, no, stay here.”

Both of them look over to the little purr, a tone they’ve never heard before from Lily. Sirius feels his mind skip briefly into white noise, turntable needle hiss for once in his rampant brain. Lily’s speaking voice is all edges, all smart slants and sharp wit, and listening to her is normally like looking at modern art. But something in her words now is melted-down, distilled, as though someone has held heat to those sculptures and exposed delicate little carvings trapped inside, meant only for a very small audience.

When Sirius looks at her, she’s splayed back against James with one of his hands raking her hair up and back away from her neck and the other stroking the pale skin of her ribs beneath her cashmere. Sirius notices a wink of champagne-colored lace where her brassiere sits, just barely revealed by the stark grace, wandering brown of James’ fingers. Sirius furrows his eyebrows and meets Lily’s eyes, heavy-lidded as they are, to see the calm smile therewithin.

“Stay here? Sitting room, here?”

“Yeah.” She sighs when James attaches his lips to one side of her neck, and Sirius’ predispositions are just as surprised as his conscious thought when the sight of Lily bending into that attention stirs something in his belly the same way Remus’ fingers had at the back of his neck.

Remus puts a hand to Sirius’ lower back in what seems very much like an internal repetition of Sirius’ question. “Don’t you want some privacy?” His voice is gentle but Sirius can hear curious hackles raised beneath its surface, a brand new mixture of intrigue and possessiveness. It runs rampant through his heart and Sirius finds he enjoys that _very_ much.

Lilly seems as though she’s about to reply, mouth open with a smile at its edges, but she bites down on her lip and presses back into James with an encouraging little half-gasp when his hand slips down to the height of her thigh. The soft corduroy of her skirt has hitched a bit up her waist, and while Lily’s knickers aren’t visible yet Sirius can absolutely tell that’s where those slow-roaming fingers are planning to find home. Sirius swallows when he meets James eyes, spectacles gone at some point to rest on a side table along with his empty port glass, staring darkling-bright with the gentle challenge of mischief Sirius misses so intensely sometimes it makes his teeth ache.

“Stay here,” Lily repeats on a whisper, “stay if you want.” She twists to kiss James again and reaches back to bury a hand in his hair, and Sirius is struck by the parallels of bodies moving together tonight in all sorts of lovely shapes. Remus’ hand slides up to rest at the back of his shirt collar, and Sirius wrests himself from winding thoughts to look over at him.

“Your call.” Remus’ voice is soft, pupils dilated ever so slightly, and Sirius can feel the pleasant threads of tension in his touch. They’ve been fucking with almost laughable regularity these days to stave off the stress around them—bedroom, kitchen, sitting room, broom closet at the last Order meeting, the bathroom at the pub down the street. _Who needs therapy when there’s libido?_ Sirius joked several days back, charming the splatter of Remus’ climax off his chest with the armor of a raised eyebrow and a clenched jaw thrown up around him. Remus laughed, but his refusal to parry with his own wit spoke volumes.

They could all do with a bit of lightness these days.

Without another allowance for hesitation, Sirius nods as he lowers himself onto the large arm of the chair. “Yeah, I think so.”

Remus’ eyes relax and he licks his lips quickly before settling down on his same seat again, not much lower than Sirius’ own place for the style and general poof of the chair. He winds an arm around Sirius’ hip and rests a warm hand there as Sirius’ insides tug pleasantly. “Alright.”

Unbothered, James and Lily have continued their slow, deep kisses in a way Sirius can tell they would have whether or not he and Remus had simply said _Goodnight_ or remained here. But James’ stare flashes with approval in a single flicker to see the two of them seated again, and as if in reward he slips the hand rubbing along Lily’s leg up beneath the hem of her skirt.

“What do you want, sweetling?” James murmurs against her jaw. Strands of copper hair catch at his lips but he pays them little mind, intent instead on doing something with his hand that makes a small sound slip from Lily’s lips.

“Go down on me?” She colors her request with a knowing little grin while she tilts her hips, and James makes a low sound of approval as he shifts to kiss along her neck again. The internal basin of Sirius’ pelvis glows. Remus’ thumb finds Sirius’ skin between his trousers and his shirt, beginning to rub there softly while Sirius shifts to accept the touch. James slides up the hem of Lily’s skirt and her knees fall open with a graceful slip. His fingers are pressing intently at the pale blue fabric of her knickers, almost secretive between her legs along what must be a very sweet spot for her with the little sound that comes from her again.

Her eyes are closed, but Sirius can tell that Lily is in bliss. She’s arched back into James as he touches her, slides a hand beneath her bra, hooks a thumb into the top elastic of her pants and deepens his press on her sex; Sirius has never been with a girl and while he’s seen pictures—both the still and moving sort—they’ve never looked like they were enjoying it this much. Perhaps he actually enjoys women just a bit in addition to blokes, sort of like Remus does?

“Doesn’t she look fucking beautiful?” James’ voice is rough with desire, and he’s doing something with one hand at Lily’s back beneath her cashmere that looks like a complicated runic spell before her bra falls away and Sirius realizes he was simply undoing its clasp. The self-consciousness simmering under Sirius’ skin is breaking through his calm, just a bit, and the nervous laughter brewing for the silliness of Sirius aligning a brassiere with dark magic is readied on his tongue before it dies when Remus tightens his grip on Sirius ever so slightly.

Lily’s breasts are still part-way obscured by her rucked-up top, but they’re pert and pink-nippled and striated with silvery little stretch marks on their sides, and the sight is clearly doing _something_ to Remus’ higher functions. Sirius thinks they just look cute; James’ hand reaching up to caress them, on the other hand, is strong and veined and calloused by years of quidditch and Sirius knows exactly how it feels wrapped in his hair and, and Alright, Fine, Sirius is _entirely_ attracted to blokes, but James is right. Lily looks fucking beautiful.

“Entirely.” Remus watches James and Lily but slips the hand on Sirius’ hip up to stroke beneath his shirt and along his skin, and Sirius’ thrills with the newness of it twisting into the pleasant easement of their shared high. They never had the privilege of Lily with them for their dormitory adventures with James toward the end of school. Sirius is quietly eager to learn how the dynamic fits now.

Something makes James chuckle low to himself, a sound at odds with the high gasp he draws from Lily when he slips his middle and ring fingers down into her knickers and pets at her more directly. “You look like a pair of statues. Relax, yeah? You can carry on as you please, don’t mind us.”

There’s a moment Sirius feels just behind his diaphragm in which he knows Remus could be liable to shut down. The gorgeous swot hates being told what to do, and it almost rises to his surface. _Almost._ Instead, through the glory of something undefined and hallowed in this rare theatre of pleasure between the four of them, Remus breaks with a carefree laugh that beckons an unbidden smile to everyone’s face. Sirius could weep for the shimmering lack of preoccupation ruling that expression. “Sure, Potter. Whatever you say.”

“Good man. Feel free, go on, no one’s stopping you.” James dives back into Lily’s neck and Sirius marvels at the way he loves her; softly kneading her breast, careful teeth and tongue on her skin, two fingers now teasing slowly in and out of her and playing in small circles along the crest of her mound beneath her panties.

“C’mere then,” Remus breathes at Sirius’ ear, sliding his arm closer around Sirius’ waist and pulling him, dearly, into a deep kiss.

Sirius has a half-second of reluctance trapped behind his teeth before the taste of Remus’ mouth erases it with one breath. His eyes fall shut and he turns, slipping one hand up to cradle the back of Remus’ neck and smoothing the other down to brace on his arm. Remus holds Sirius around his waist, hands hot and protective, and Sirius feels his heart soar with the excitement of taking their pleasure as they please, with the other couple doing the same across from them.

He loses himself in their kisses for a time and forgets to worry about anything besides making sure he lasts as long as possible in this delicate perfection of togetherness. After a moment, Lily makes a withered and ecstatic sound that pulls at Sirius’ attention. He turns to face the sofa, causing Remus to kiss down to his collarbone as he loses access to Sirius’ lips, and enjoys the way his throat catches at the sight.

James has lowered himself to the floor between Lily’s legs with the backs of her knees resting on his shoulders, knickers off along with her skirt. Lily has one hand in James’ hair, holding him close, and the other teasing at one of her nipples while James works his mouth along her quim intently beneath the delicate fan of dark copper hair nestled in a vee between her legs. Sirius meets Lily’s eyes, cloudy with sex above the high blush under her freckles, when she laughs breathlessly. “Hi.”

“Hey— _ah.”_ Sirius’ heart stammers and he gasps when Remus sets a thumb to Sirius’ own nipple beneath his shirt, sucking softly at the knuckle of Sirius’ throat. Lily laughs again, musical and bright and open, to make the pieces of the universe feel perfectly whole in the moment.

“You’re welcome to touch yourselves.” She says it as though she’s inviting Sirius and Remus to help themselves to another spot of tea, and Sirius is about to dredge up some witticism about milk and sugar when Remus kills the thought by pulling back and fixing Sirius with a stare so hungry it drags Sirius’ cock from half-hard to nearly rigid in just a few heartbeats.

Remus looks over at Lily and James and hums a rumble of satisfaction at the same time he lazily slips Sirius’ shirt hem up higher to request it come _Off._ “Let me know if you need any pointers, Prongs.”

Sirius is trapped in the gathered black fabric whirling his hair around his face when Remus speaks, and it’s deliciously disorienting to Sirius to hear that carefree tone from him while Remus’ hands are still all over Sirius in addition to the momentary loss of sight. “All due respect, mate,” Sirius hears James say against Lily’s thigh with good humor as he finally slips the shirt up and off with a great tangling of hair, “I think my know-how is loads more recent thhan yours.”

It’s Remus’ turn to laugh then, scoring llike continuo beneath Lily’s higher voice when she joins in but jags off into a shorn groan, head thrown back, when James does something devilish with his tongue. _“Fuck,_ Jamie, right there.”

Sirius and Remus look back at one another with identical little smirks at the nickname, neither willing to say anything snide because they’re enjoying it too much—yes, it’s clear Remus is having just as fine a time as Sirius with this, his eyes are deep with lust and mirth and adoration as they flicker along Sirius’ own and the swell of his mouth. Sirius kisses him, deep and long and guiding those large hands along his naked chest, before Remus guides him solidly into his lap. Sirius sits eagerly, his back against the soft wool of Remus’ jumper, rolling his hips against the solid bulge held back behind his jeans. _Soon,_ he thinks to himself, _but still more of a show to watch._

Remus sets to peppering filthy kisses along the top ridge of Sirius’ shoulder muscles and the base of his neck, and Sirius grins to himself to see Lily watching with rich approval. She’s panting openly, knees gripping more solidly at the sides of James’ head while he laps eagerly between her thighs, and she tosses out what she can of a grin across to the boys on the armchair. “A bit new for you, is it?”

“I had no idea you carried such _adventurous_ inclinations, Evans.” Sirius cards his fingers over the back of Remus’ right hand, linking them, and guides the touch down to the front of his jeans as he sasses Lily. The warm pressure of it makes him gasp a bit, right on time with a particularly angular cry that escapes Lily alongside an encouraging hum from James. Her husband’s left hand is busy thumbing her clitoris beneath his tongue and beckoning into her slit with another finger, and his right is beginning to stroke at his own trousers in a slow, preparatory rhythm. Sirius’ mouth fairly waters, and Remus must feel the twitch in Sirius’ cock for he breathes a pleased huff against the back of Sirius’ neck while licking him there.

“You like watching?” Remus’ voice is a rocky whisper, only for him, and Sirius nods as he watches Lily deepen her grip on James’ hair and throw one hand back to hold tightly to the back of the sofa. She breathes a shadowy _Fuck_ , knitting her eyebrows together and tipping her hips forward as James looks up at her with an encouraging gaze made of fire itself.

Sirius swallows dryly. “Yeah.”

“They’ll watch us too, you know.” Remus begins undoing the buttons on Sirius’ fly and twists Sirius’ face back to kiss him deeply as he does. When they draw apart by a hair’s breadth, Sirius grins against Remus’ mouth.

“Are you going to fuck me, Moony?”

“Still deciding. Going to make you come though, one way or another.”

Lily’s breathing has gone completely ragged by now, and Sirius rips his attention away from Remus’ searing presence for long enough to hear Lily panting around incessant little _Yes_ es. Her thighs are quivering, her knuckles are white, and James abandons stroking himself to grip Lily by the hip with his free hand and double down on his attentions. Lily’s eyes are clenched shut and her mouth is open, a soundless cry building like a swirling incantation. Her cashmere is pushed up above her breasts, baring the pale flushed planes of her skin like a map James knows how to read more fluently than anything—he leans into her when one of his motions makes her body seize sweetly, sing a strain written in rushing blood and thundering pulse, and Lily throws her head back against the pillow behind her.

“There, James, I’m—” She cuts herself off with a whimper that shoots through Sirius’ senses like quicksilver and makes Remus groan, just barely, into the curve of Sirius’ neck where he’s resumed those maddening kisses of his. Lily cries out softly, still building, seemingly eternal in her attenuating pleasure, and curls toward James with another broken pule of _“Yes.”_ James’ rhythm doesn’t flag and Sirius doesn’t even flinch when Remus draws Sirius’ cock into the open, stroking him slowly in contrast to the imminent completion coming to life before them.

Sirius has never seen a woman climax before, and even he has to admit that it’s fucking magical. Lily arches up against James’ mouth with one last delicate shout, wordless, her legs trembling, her stomach flat and heaving, her breasts twitching with the tremors striating her body, and then suddenly she’s shaking and moaning and spilling invisibly into James as he sees her through it. She pleads his name, love itself on her lips, and Sirius is in awe of the way James keeps his pace, doesn’t stop until Lily is a quivering puddle on the couch and bats harmlessly at the side of his head with a small sound after several long moments. Remus squeezes gently at the base of Sirius’ cock to draw him out of his semi-trance, a shared sort of _Amazing, isn’t it?_ that makes Sirius twist shallowly to look at him.

“You ever do that to a girl?” It’s half teasing and half truly curious, and Remus chuckles to himself and shakes his head.

“I didn’t know you could use your mouth when I was still free to pull girls. You really stymied my talents there, Black.”

James wrests his shirt off and leans forward to trace tender little kisses along Lily’s stomach and collar and the space between her breasts. He turns to Remus and Sirius as he sets to undoing his trousers and shakes his head. “A crying shame.”

Remus laughs again. Sirius’ heart fills right up to its brim, destined to overflow at some point soon but he doesn’t bloody _care_ —James grins at them and sheds his pants, cock standing hard and ready against his leg, and he lays himself down next to Lily before helping her out of her cashmere.

“Ta, love.” Her voice is sleepy but limned with impishness, and she turns herself to face him with a winded sigh. “Can I go on top, then?”

“Sure, but I just want to hold you a bit, yeah?” James hums into the space behind her ear, a comfortable exchange as though they’re the only ones in the room, and James spoons himself around Lily as the two of them turn their eyes to Sirius and Remus. “Charge up, these two are still mostly clothed anyways.”

“Come on lads, even the score!” Lily hooks one ankle around James’ foot and beams at Sirius, and Remus huffs another laugh against his skin.

Happiness. It’s _real_ happiness, that sense of abandon Sirius hasn’t felt since just after he ran away from home for good, that they’re all feeling right now. Whether it’s the weed or the alcohol or the cigarettes or the full doses of sex they’re feeding one another right now, it doesn’t fucking matter. Sirius lets it saturate him, pour through his skin in the shapes of Remus’ touch and breath and the feeling of the Potters watching him with something that feels like pride, and leans back into Remus’s chest to shimmy of out his trousers and pants.

“Remus is the primary offender,” Sirius grunts as he kicks the battered denim and clunky jangle of his belt to the floor. Remus snorts and nudges Sirius forward before tugging at the back of his own jumper and pulling in one fluid motion to fling it to the ground as well. His trousers are rough on the naked skin of Sirius’ thighs and so Sirius goes to his knees and works intently at the buckled hasp above the straining heft of Remus’ clothed cock.

The slow, subtle sounds of James pulling Lily into another round of deep kisses drives Sirius with a thud in his heart as he tugs Remus’ trousers down and away. His y-fronts are useless against the rod of his cock, gapping with almost comical readiness, and so Sirius reaches through to wrap an eager hand around it, stroking to spread the wetness already building at the tip. Remus hisses through his teeth, the skin of his chest pulling to tug at the shapes of several shallow scars with the motion, and Sirius is mad for it.

“D’you want my mouth on it?” Sirius licks his lips preemptively, already craving the heavy feeling of Remus’ cock on his tongue, but Remus shakes his head and tips his chin up. There’s a loud shift and a giggle from the sofa, and Sirius turns to see James flopping onto his back with Lily following on top of him. They’re still tangled in a riot of kisses and laughter, and his heart pulls with sympathetic adoration. They’re perfect. All four of them are bloody fucking _perfect._

“Come here, Sirius.”

Remus beckons him with Sirius’ name like wine on his tongue, readied and red-bellied to pour into Sirius’ own mouth as Sirius sits back down on his lap to kiss him fully. Both hands on either side of Remus’ face, Remus’ hands digging tenderly into Sirius’ flanks, Sirius breathes him in as though his essence is another mild drug to carry him further aloft into euphoria.

A low intonation from James on the couch is too muddled to divine its meaning, but Lily sighs again with a hitching little sound and Sirius knows they’re shagging again. “Let me fuck your thighs,” Remus murmurs against the scrape of Sirius’ jaw, “Want you wet with it by the time we both finish.”

Sirius’ pulse twists with the sweetest torque and he groans along the slide of Remus’ tongue when they meet for another sucking kiss. Eventually, Remus turns him around with a clement fist around Sirius’ cock. He whispers a wandless lubrication charm into both palms, and between the sudden sweet slick of it between his legs and around his cock Sirius can’t find words to protest another use of magic.

James and Lily are splayed gloriously across the sofa, James on his back with both hands holding Lily’s waist as he thrusts into her and Lily riding him with beatific rapture carved into every inch of her body. Her legs are bent, kneeling on her shins with her hips working James in almost punishingly-accurate rolls with his pumping, as she leans back slightly to bare her upper body and let her small breasts jostle pleasantly with each rock. Sirius recognizes a familiar roll in the rhythm Lily has struck, a similar motion he’s used time and again when he and Remus fuck, and a funny sense of camaraderie bubbles in his chest before he forgets how to think with the advent of Remus’ cock pressing at the seam between Sirius’ legs. He lets out a low breath of a moan.

“Fuck me.” Sirius leans back against Remus and squeezes his legs together, wrapping his ankles back behind Remus’ heels for leverage. The slip of the lubricant is easy and presses at all the best ridges of Sirius’ senses—Remus wraps a hand around Sirius’ cock and begins fucking Sirius with encompassing attention, and Sirius goes nearly blind to the world that isn’t the two of them.

Through the wet rhythm of Remus cock and the pleasure that swallows him whole because of it, Sirius is distantly impressed at James’ stamina. Lily mounts the crest of another hasty and shaking orgasm, shuddering atop James as he licks and thumbs at her nipples from beneath her, and James still hasn’t lost his load. Sirius has had to bite down on his resolve more than once when completion threatens at his edges with a certain twist of Remus’ palm or a beautiful sound from James and Lily, but he holds fast. He takes over stroking his own cock after long enough, wanting to edge himself as carefully as he can to make it last, but he adores finishing as near to Remus as possible and can already feel portentous hot breath at his neck.

 _“I’m close,”_ a gasp as though Remus can read his thoughts, and Sirius tenses his thighs ever so slightly and bites down on his lip as he speeds his fist along his own cock by a tick. James’ face has furrowed in concentrated avoidance when Sirius glances up at him, eyes screwed shut and mouth hanging open as Lily whispers something surely filthy to him, and Sirius can tell from their tumbles as a hapless trio back in the dormitory that James isn’t but an inch away from finishing.

Nearly on cue, James lets out a stuttered little gasp and his hips snap up flush against Lily’s peachy backside before he groans a rich plea of Lily’s name mixed with several gasping permutations of “I love you.” Lily continues to ride him through it, kissing him as they go, and murmuring gently along his lips with her hands propping her jellied body up on the span of his chest.

Remus sniffs sharply against Sirius back after several more strokes, the bucking slide of their rhythm rubbing incessant loveliness into the base of Sirius’ cock and bollocks. Sirius squeezes his eyes shut and picks up his strokes, feels his approach build like a wave, and can’t help but let it crash. “Coming—Remus, I’m _coming.”_

Sirius lets fly the sling of his release and cries out, his voice breaking, as he spills over his fist and onto his legs. Remus continues fucking him, the quivering leg muscles shining as Remus’ cockhead oozes precum onto them to mix with Sirius’ splattered seed, and Sirius tries to catch at the sprinting thread of sanity as it unravels before him. He floats above reality on a combined high from the weed and the endorphins and readily absorbs the beauty when, only several strokes later, Remus bites down softly on Sirius’ shoulder and comes richly into the seam of Sirius’ thighs. He vents a long groan, low and airy, and Sirius commits it to memory alongside every other twist and turn of this man’s life that he cherishes more than gold itself.

Soon enough, the four collect themselves and cast a few tidy cleansing charms that Sirius again can’t be bothered to be chitty about. They find their clothes and resituate themselves, in laughably similar spots to where they had begun so it nearly seems like it never happened at all—but above all else, there’s a sense of calm sewn between them now.

“Thanks for that.” Sirius voice is slightly raw, but he grins as he wriggles down to share the armchair seat with Remus after pulling his shirt back on. His limbs feel like they’re humming with contentment for once instead of compacted magic.

“Cheers, yeah, it was fun.” Lily’s grin is sunny, even with night fallen completely beyond the window. Sirius is struck for a moment with the rogue thought that she’s going to make a very well-rounded and patient mother someday.

“Same time next week then?” James jokes with his quidditch captain’s rise of the eyebrow, and it’s Lily who rolls her eyes hardest before snuggling into his side as Remus makes a sidelong comment about the showers.

Here, things feel whole. James holds Lily a bit more closely. Lily’s eyes shine with a marginally softer light. Remus’ mouth harbors the slightest little smile at its corners, and Sirius’ eyebrows aren’t gathered into that incessant crease between them as though he’s the one who owns the glasses left upside-down on the side table next to James’ empty port snifter.

For at least a short while, after such a necessary release of stress and emotion and everything else at work in their hearts lately, Sirius feels at peace. This tenderness he feels sends the habitual dark in him down so low he can hardly sense it at the moment, and it’s pure enchantment.

He gathers Remus in close, like a prayer and an oath all at once, and hopes this calm can last at least long enough to stick in his mind if he ever has need for a memory to keep him breathing through the long, black abyss of calamity.

  


_—fin—_


End file.
